Soul man

Ray Mason spins through the history of pop

by John O'Neill

Ray Mason still comes across as a guy filled with wide-eyed optimism and wonder when he talks about music. While many of his contemporaries are bitter after years of toil or they're just playing for the paycheck, Mason bubbles at the idea of driving from his

home base in the Pioneer Valley to play small clubs across the Northeast (he checks into the Above Club this Friday after a three-year absence from Wormtown). More than a working musician, Mason is still very much a fan of his vocation.

"Listening to music is one of the pleasures of life, like going to the bathroom to read the newspaper," he says during a recent phone call. "It's a luxury. I was hooked at an early age, and it's been full-steam-ahead ever since."

Having come of age during the sixties, Mason listened to less-formatted AM and FM radio where artists as diverse as the Beatles and Sinatra and Motown groups would all be played within the same block. Like a sponge, Mason took in these disparate influences and began writing his own songs in 1967. However, he wouldn't start to play his compositions until much later.

"I was on the road playing bass till 1980 and had stockpiled a bunch of songs in my bedroom. I was kind of shy, but a friend told me I should consider doing them fronting my own band," says Mason.

With a little encouragement and twenty dollars, he bought a Silvertone guitar from a pal and a Peavy amp (he still performs with both) and recruited a few friends to round out the band in 1982. The Ray Mason Band have released six acclaimed cassette-only albums as well as full-length CDs for Ocean and Chunk Records (both of which have since folded their tents) as well as a new release, Old Souls Day, for the Northampton-based fledgling Wormco Records.

Loaded with the influences he's grown up with, Old Souls Day is a 40-minute romp through the history of pop music. From the summertime-sixties vibe of "When She Walks By" to the lounge-surf instro "Wilson Rd." to the just-for-fun hillbilly of "Your 19 . . .," Mason offers 13 distinctive numbers that conjure up aspects of Hank Williams, Brian Wilson, Jonathan Richman, Terry Anderson, Freedy Johnson, and Neil Young.

"I do like a lot of different things," he explains. "I don't want to hold myself to one thing. That's the problem with big record labels. They want one style of music to put in a box so people don't get confused. I've been around ages, and it comes out in the things I do; so to only write in one style would make me very unhappy."

Although one can hear basic touchstones throughout the album, Mason does more than write pop songs -- he writes what only can be termed modern American music. He is able to infuse his music with the simplicity that early rock and roll offered while adding layers of sound and harmony that add to the music's emotional potency. Organ here, vibes there, pedal steel sneaking out from beneath the vocals -- Mason loads his ditties of life and love with extras that require repeated listening to get to the bottom of.

"I hear things in my head being a certain way," he explains. "When you're making a record and you have the room to do the extras to make it sound like it does in your head, you do it. It can take a song up to another level."

It makes for some pretty heady listening as Old Souls Day bounces from genre and styles with a breezy effortlessness few have been able to achieve. It's never forced, it's never boring, and it's never the same thing twice. The only thing holding the album together stylistically is Mason's endearing, warm, and quirky vocals. It's a soul-baring delivery that is charming, innocent, self-depreciating, delicate, and powerful all at once. It's the type of honest and unselfconscious singing that either makes the listeners feel they know the singer personally or wish that they did. It is no wonder that there is a Ray Mason-tribute CD currently in the works.

"I got a late start, but what the heck, better late than never," he says. "I still keep up and listen 'cause music is like going to school. I'm a fan of music, and I don't ever want to lose the feeling of being a fan.

"The only thing that bothers me is my equipment is getting heavier, and it's the same gear I've been using right along!"